Government $ for Clean or Dirty Energy?

The solar sector can play a key role in the nation’s economic recovery and replace dirty fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. But for this to happen, federal, state, and local governments must create incentives, strengthen existing ones, and invest in education and job training. And, they should significantly reduce and eventually eliminate government subsidies for fossil fuels.

So far it is the individual states that have done the most to promote solar. Both New Mexico and California have energy tax credits and are aggressively investing in educating their workers in order to attract solar manufacturing companies to their states. Surprisingly, the top ten solar states in the U.S. include Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and Oregon. The solar potential for these states is comparably much lower than in much of the rest of the country but their robust solar policy has made them leaders in solar energy generation.

Removing the billions of dollars in subsidies that go to the coal, oil, and gas industries would also be a major boon to the growth of solar – and other renewables for that matter. In this case it is the Federal government - the Congress, the Senate, and the President - that are responsible for handing out subsidies to the fossil fuel sector. These industries receive tens of billions of dollars of subsidies per year from the government maintaining artificially low prices for fossil fuels that have extraordinarily high costs for public health, climate change, and the environment as a whole. Redirecting those subsidies to renewable power such as solar would make renewable energy the cheaper form of energy generation, spur job creation and economic growth, avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in health costs from air pollution, and fight climate change.